hellfire

Noun

hellfire (countable and uncountable, plural hellfires)

1. (uncountable) The fire of Hell.
   • The sound of the gang was diminishing into the distance, and the prophet of doom, restored to eloquence, was sending threatful bolts of damnation, hell-fire, and a brimstone gehenna hurtling after them.1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 59
2. (uncountable) Fire produced by the Devil, or a similar supernatural creature connected to Hell.
3. (broadly, countable) A fire that burns with unusual heat or ferocity.

Adjective

hellfire (comparative more hellfire, superlative most hellfire)

1. Of or relating to a violent, apocalyptic and ultimate day of reckoning and judgment; usually characterizing a form of Christian preaching.
   • The advance of liberalism, so-called, in Christianity, during the past fifty years, may fairly be called a victory of healthy-mindedness within the church over the morbidness with which the old hell-fire theology was more harmoniously related.1902, William James, “Lectures 4 & 5”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC
   • Sermons such as The Eternity of Hell Torments and The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable, as well as several manuscript examples, serve to mark the distinction between a true hellfire sermon and the proto-eschatological concerns of Sinners [in the Hands of an Angry God]...2005, Sang Hyun Lee, The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards, University of Princeton Press, page 253

Interjection

1. hell; damn; blast